Inequality

= inequalities are avoidable, morally unjustified, hierarchical differences.

Typology

Göran Therborn:

"There are (at least) three fundamentally different kinds of inequality, and all of them are destructive of human lives and of human societies.

There is inequality of health and death, which we may call vital inequality. True, we are all mortal and physically vulnerable, and in some sense our life-tree is decided by some inscrutable lottery. However, hard evidence is piling up that health and longevity are distributed with clearly visible social patterns. Children in poor countries and poor classes die more often before the age of one, and between the age of one and five, than children in rich countries and rich classes. Low-status people in Britain die more often before retirement age than high-status people, and if they survive have shorter lives in retirement. A retired British male bank or insurance employee, for instance, can look forward to seven to eight more years of retirement life than a retired employee of Whitbread or Tesco (Financial Times, 20/21.10.07). Vital inequality, which we can measure relatively easily through life expectancy and survival rates, is literally destroying millions of human lives in the world every year.

Existential inequality hits you as a person. It restricts the freedom of action of certain categories of persons, for instance of women in public spaces and spheres, as in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and as in some countries still today. Existential inequality means denial of (equal) recognition and respect, and is a potent generator of humiliations, for black people, (Amer-)Indians, women in patriarchal societies, poor immigrants, low castes and stigmatised ethnic groups. It is important to note here that existential inequality does not only take the form of blatant discrimination; it also operates effectively through more subtle status hierarchies.

Thirdly, there is material or resource inequality, meaning that human actors have very different resources to draw upon. We can distinguish two aspects here. The first is inequality of access – to education, career tracks and social contacts, to what is called "social capital". In conventional mainstream discussions this aspect is often referred to as "inequality of opportunity". The second is inequality of rewards, often referred to as inequality of outcome. This is the most frequently used measure of inequality – the distribution of income, sometimes also of wealth.

These three kinds of inequality interact with and influence each other. But it is useful to distinguish between them because, as well as having different types of effects on people, the different kinds of inequality have different trajectories in different periods – which means that they are governed by different causal mechanisms.

Inequality can be produced in four basic ways. First there is distantiation – some people are running ahead and/or others falling behind. Secondly there is the mechanism of exclusion – through which a barrier is erected making it impossible, or at least more difficult, for certain categories of people to access a good life. Thirdly, the institutions of hierarchy mean that societies and organisations are constituted as ladders, with some people perched on top and others below. Finally, there is exploitation, in which the riches of the rich derive from the toil and the subjection of the poor and the disadvantaged." (http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2009-10-02-therborn-en.html)